Why Amanda Knox 'truthers' still believe she is guilty

Amanda Knox, the U.S.
student convicted of killing her British flatmate in Italy in
2007, looks on during a trial session in Perugia January 22,
2011.REUTERS/Alessia
Pierdomenico

Every time a new development happens in the Amanda Knox case, I
get a bunch of angry emails and tweets from amateur internet
sleuths who believe that Knox did in fact kill her roommate,
Meredith Kercher, in their house in Perugia, Italy, way back in
2007. (They are usually reacting to
this article, which summarises the main points of the case.)

These people — Knox Truthers, basically — cannot wait until she
is extradited back to Italy for a second trial on the same facts
that were presented the first time around, and ultimately
overturned on appeal. The Italian justice system is complicated,
and both defence and prosecution can appeal and acquittal. The
prosecution won its ultimate appeal to the Court of Cassation,
which is why Knox is likely to be dragged back to Italy to again
relive the murder of her roommate.

So I spent some time on Knox truther web sites recently to see if
there was anything I was missing.

First it should be noted that Knox Truthers have one
admirable ambition: Justice for Kercher, the 21-year-old student
who was senselessly killed in her own home. But even on their own
evidence, the case against Knox is weak at best and, more
importantly, points much more convincingly to the man who has
actually been found guilty of the crime.

So let's dive into the Knox Truther rabbit hole. You can see for
yourself how deep it goes at these anti-Knox sites here and
here.

Could it be, perhaps, that the amateurs were right and that Knox
did in fact kill one of her friends?

To believe that theory you basically have to believe that Knox,
aged 20, plotted a bizarre
three-sided sexual assault on Kercher with a knife (along with
her boyfriend and another dude she hardly knew), and then staged
a break-in, and then stole Kercher's phone, and then dumped it in
a nearby garden, and then stayed at the crime scene to cooperate
with the police. She did this without leaving her DNA at the
scene.

You also have to accept that it
is not enough that a man has already been found guilty
of killing Kercher after his DNA, fingerprints, footprints, and
poop were found at the scene. That man, Rudy
Guede had a history of breaking into people's houses and stealing
knives, and he fled to Germany after the killing, after all
but confessing to a friend that he was in Germany because he knew
the police would be after him. He's currently serving 16 years in
prison.

The strongest part of the case against Knox is the reason the
Italian courts are sending the case back for another trial.
This ruling describes how, upon appeal, the court found that
there was evidence that Guede did not act alone when he killed
Kercher. It's a long ruling, but much of the "evidence" cited is
conjecture on the part of the court. For instance, there is an
entire section speculating why Kircher had so few defensive
wounds. The court seems to think she should have put up more of a
fight. Perhaps she did not because she believed she was with
friends.

Perhaps!

Or perhaps the reality of sexual assault is that it's not like
the movies, it's terrifying, it happens really quickly, and often
women hope that if they just keep still it will end more quickly
and they won't be killed. There is no section in the ruling on
that scenario.

Rudy Guede, who was
convicted of killing Meredith Kircher.Italian police

The anti-Knox case also relies heavily on some of Knox's own poor
behaviour after her arrest:

She lied to the police
and falsely implicated her boss at a nightclub in the
crime. She has actually been convicted of that crime and
paid a big fine and done prison time for that. (The false
allegation came after Knox had been questioned for hours and, she
claims, slapped by a police officer. While it looks bad, it
actually doesn't prove her involvement in the crime either
way.)

She kissed and hugged
her new boyfriend while they waited for the police to
investigate the crime at her house. (They were kept out of the
house while the police were in there, and it was November. Plus,
her boyfriend was one of the few people in Italy she actually
knew.)

Her boyfriend's DNA was
found on the bra clasp of Kercher. (The
bra clasp evidence was mishandled by police — it lay on
the floor of the crime scene for six weeks before blood evidence
was found on it. Knox's DNA, fingerprints or footprints were
not found anywhere else in the crime scene even though
Kercher's bedroom was covered in blood.*)

Knox tells
lies. (Well, she apparently gave varying accounts to the
police of what she did before and after the time of the killing.
But even if you accept
this anti-Knox site's list of Knox's "lies," none of those
lies actually prove she killed someone. They are all — with the
exception of the false statements about her boss — the kind of
routine slip-ups anyone would make under intense questioning from
police. If you can't remember exactly what you did yesterday,
minute from minute, and have your account match with your phone
records then you'd be the same kind of "liar.")

None of the anti-Knox sites cut
Knox any slack for the obvious: She was 20. She came from a
sheltered American background. She was naive. She knew few people
in Italy. She was being interrogated for a murder in Italian, a
language she barely spoke. And she was young, arrogant and
dumb.

Her entire life until that
night had added up to playing soccer in high school, trying to
learn Italian on a study abroad program, and playing acoustic
guitar badly. Yet for the Knox Truthers, her year abroad in Italy
was suddenly the opportunity she was looking for to become a gang
sex killer who was amazing at cleaning up crime scenes.

None of the anti-Knox crowd
seem to accept the obvious — that the guy who was literally
convicted of the murder, and whose role in the killing is not
disputed, is in fact the killer.

*Correction: This article
initially said, incorrectly, that the bra clasp DNA was Knox's.
It belonged to her boyfriend, Raffaele
Sollecito.